There is a disturbing account in Private Eye's current issue, and the more I try to follow the threads in various stories the more it seems to me that the rich really are just laughing at the rest of us. Very soon I am going to be a full blown conspiracy theorist: I see no other outcome.
Lord Stephen Green is a former high heid yin at HSBC bank. In September he was appointed as an unpaid Trade Minister in our current government. Isn't that nice, that he would give up what was presumably a very highly paid position to work for the public good for no reward? Heart warming, I call it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/7...e-Minister.htmlIn another part of the forest, George Osbourne, our esteemed chancellor, has just agreed a tax deal with Switzerland which guarantees there will be no prosecution of bankers for tax fraud. He is quite proud of this deal, which he says will recover quite a lot of money for the british treasury. There are those who believe the deal is a drop in the ocean, but presumably they are malcontents.
So why am I telling you this in this particular thread. Well it is because the American regulators have not done such a deal: rather they have decided to prosecute where they can and a number of wealthy americans have already been convicted of major tax evasion through HSBC in Switzerland. The bank is also being investigated and in a parallel case involving Swiss bank UBS,the bank settled criminal charges of $780 million and several of the bankers were convicted for fraud.
HSBC is one of the banks the americans are pursuing for fraud as outlined in the OP. Lord Green, it so happens, was CEO and later chairman HSBC during the time this is alleged to have happened. Indeed he chaired the particular part of HSBC named in the allegations: HSBC Bank USA Inc. But he doesn't work for the bank any more: and in the UK there are to be no criminal investigations. I suppose I should see his public service as a sort of community service, shouldn't I ?
I don't
